"Blend If" in Elements 2

[dpnew]

Blend If techniques in Photoshop Elements 2

view here

If someone who uses Elements 1 can try the tutorial and tell me if it works for that version, I'll change the title. I think it should, but I didn't have access to Elements 1 to test it out.

[dpnew]

Hmmm...ohhhhhhmmmmm...ohhhhhhmmmm. Serenity now. Serenity now.

After finishing this tutorial, my recommendation for writing tutorials is to NOT do it all at once on your computer and then try to upload the whole thing, as the tutorial on writing tutorials recommends. I can't tell you how many times I had to redo all my images to get the sizes right and to get them to line up properly, and that was after having checked with several people about the correct size before I started. And then, after hours and hours of trying to get everything uploaded and last minute changes to redo images that weren't fitting properly or didn't look correct, I clicked the publish button, and 25 out of 30 of my images failed--I just got a blank white square and a red x. I also notice the font size in the published version isn't the same size you see when you are constructing the tutorial.

So, I would recommend that anybody who writes a tutorial of any length should do it in sections. When you get done with a short section, publish it, and check to make sure you are doing things correctly. Then, finish another short section and upload it to your published tutorial. Put "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" in the title or something to let people know you aren't finished. Keep adding to it in small steps. That way if you find something you are doing wrong, you won't have to redo everything. I found out the hard way--hours and hours of work down the drain. Sheesh!

Ohh...and I tried changing the link to the tutorial from "details" to "click here" and the link got deleted. The way things are going I'm sure that means the whole tutorial evaporated??

[dpnew]

I can't get the font size to work. There is a complete disconnect between what I am doing in the editor and what gets published.

The first problem is the font size does not appear the same size when you publish it--it's much smaller. Ok, so you have to go up to a bigger size in the editor. I tried a couple of different sizes, and now I've hit on the best one. I changed the first paragraph to that size in the editor, and I got it to publish. Then I changed the second paragraph in the editor, and it wouldn't publish in the bigger size, even though in the editor the font size in the second paragraph is the same as the font size in the first paragraph. When I publish them, the font size in the second paragraph is smaller. What's going on?

[Leah]

I imagine that some html coding has got "stuck" in the underlying code for your page and is overriding the coding you are setting in the editor. If you click on the "<>" button on the toolbar when editing, you can see the html code. If you know html then you may be able to see and fix the problem there.

If you don't know html, you can try fixing things by typing

<font size="4">

right at the start of the html coding, before the first <p>, and typing

</font>

right at the end of the coding, after everything else, but I'm not convinced that will work (if it does, you may need to experiment with the number to get the size you want - larger numbers are bigger) and obviously it shouldn't be necessary. I'll drop Doug a PM and ask if he knows anything about this problem.

[Leah]

Actually, if your tutorial is the one here then all the paragraphs are displaying at the same (larger) size for me. Could your browser just be caching the earlier version of the page with the smaller font size?

[dpnew]

I've got everything sorted out now. I can't really tell what went wrong with the font, but suddenly it started working. I guess I should make a post in the discuss section of the tutorial on "How to make tutorials" to outline all the problems I had and the things I did wrong. What an ordeal.

[dpnew]

Leah,

I often direct people to your "Smart Sharpening for Elements" tutorial, but the images don't display. Any chance you could get those to work, so people aren't put off by the tutorial?

[Leah]

They display for me ... I just went now and double-checked and they're showing fine (and this is a work PC that I've not retrieved that tutorial on before, so it's not that they're cached or anything). Very strange.

[Rexx]

Originally Posted by dpnew

but the images don't display.

You get a red X? I think this is a problem with some firewall software on Windows. There is a fix for it somewhere on this site. Try a search.

[Rexx]

That was a great tutorial dpnew! I don't have Elements but PS7, and now I understand what Blend If is for!

[dpnew]

Originally Posted by Leah

They display for me ... I just went now and double-checked and they're showing fine (and this is a work PC that I've not retrieved that tutorial on before, so it's not that they're cached or anything). Very strange.

They display for me too now.

That was a great tutorial dpnew! I don't have Elements but PS7, and now I understand what Blend If is for!

Thanks, I'm glad I can help out a PS user from time to time. I hope some Elements users can understand it.

[dpnew]

Hi,

My tutorial was put in the Restoration category for some reason. None of the techiques I discuss in the tutorial have anything to do with restoration. How can I get the tutorial moved to the Retouching category?

[dpnew]

Thanks for switching the tutorial to retouching.

[Richard_Lynch]

Just to note, and I realize it is years after the tutorial was written, but as I am called out in the opening paragraph I think it right to respond, as I am seeing the article for the first time. Richard Lynch says Blend If isn't in Elements, because it isn't. There is no feature called Blend If in Elements, and no direct way to access the controls -- unless you use actions for invoking Blend If (which I have built, and I see no where else on the internet). The book I wrote on Elements, well before this article appears, discusses using Blend Mask (a set of actions I created) specifically to simulate Blend If. I didn't want to call it the same thing, because it isn't, exactly. However, you can achieve exactly the same results. There are MANY ways of achieving the same or similar ends to corrections in Photoshop and Elements, which really was the core interest of my books on Elements, and it is humorous that dpnew calls me out as a naysayer about the abilities of Elements, when in actuality I have been nothing but a proponent of the power of elements (check out the title of my books). I use the 'power' word and hope to suggest that Elements can do many more things than advertised. And revealing hidden powers was the entire agenda of the books.

So even with this tutorial, Elements in any version through version 7 does not have an interface to Blend If, but indeed you can achieve the same things using various techniques and masking -- no denying. It is not surprise to me, and I write about it in two books released before this tutorial.

I hope dpnew has found content somewhere...he seems a very deeply angry person.